Wednesday, November 6, 2013

Dr. Ruth was a sniper in the IDF. She tells this story: On her twentieth birthday, just 8 days after the Haganah* was absorbed into the IDF, just as she finished up her watch, an Arab shell exploded at her feet, seriously injuring her. "My legs were almost ripped off on my 20th birthday in 1948 in Jerusalem from cannon ball shrapnel which exploded in the residence where I was living. Three others were killed instantly and many more were wounded. The metal pierced both my legs, and there was blood everywhere. A cannon ball from Jordan had smashed through the window. I was thrown 20 feet. The strangest thing was that all I could think about was whether there might be some blood on the brand-new shoes I had just gotten for my birthday, and amazingly there wasn't even a drop on them, which was all I cared about in some kind of strange denial."

Dr. Ruth Westheimer Sorbonne-trained psychologist who became a kind of cultural icon in the 1980s. Best known as Dr. Ruth, she ushered in the new age of freer, franker talk about sex on radio and television, and was endlessly parodied for her limitless enthusiasm and for having an accent only a psychologist could have.

A friend of mine met Dr. Ruth recently and she added this: They rushed her to the hospital only to find no available beds as all of them were occupied with other war wounded. She was so short (how short was she?), she was so short that they had her recuperate on a bookshelf!

* Haganah (ההגנה HaHagana: "The Defense") was a Jewish paramilitary organization in what was then the British Mandate of Palestine from 1920 to 1948, which later became the core of the Israel Defense Forces.